söndag, maj 31, 2009

A Pastor Hamman, Independent Baptist Church in Wasilla, Alaska, has an article in the local paper Monday claiming that the Anti-christ in the Book of Daniel is a Homosexual. Click on the head-line! Don’t forget the comments section, which shows that the good people of Wasilla has better judgement than the Pastor.

The Book of Daniel is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The verse quoted by Pastor Hamman is Daniel 11:37b. The pastor uses (as American anti Moderns are wont to do - remember that the Revi-sed Standard Version is probably Communist because it has red covers :=) bisexual King James old translation (1611, revised 1765): “Neither shall he regard ... the desire of women...”

The NIV says “or for the one desired by women”. The 1917 Swe-dish State translation does the same (in Swedish), whereas both the the LXX; the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation from Alexandria – only a couple of decades later than the Book of Daniel itself (165 BC) – and the King James translation omit the “for the one” necessary in both contemporary English and Swedish saying: kaì epith-mía gunaikån and "the desire of women”, respectively.

But the "for the one" is imbedded, as it is, in the kaì.

So it is not that the King (of Syria as it is ;=) does not desire wo-men, it’s that he has no regard for the lascivious Idol (Baal or Adonis) desired by women…

Illiterate pastor for sure. As one commenter at Joe.My.God. says: “Since the asshat doesn't even respect his own holy book enough to actually read it I have no idea why he expects the rest of us to.”

I must add a reflection. The unfortunate pastor's Bible-reading is only of one half verse. Almost nothing. Further, the half verse only says what it says and means what it means. It shouldn't give cause for any mis-understandings or mis-interpretations.

Yet it does.

And I think that this is what generally happens and has happened, not only in our latter days, but for the last Millennium.

The person mis-understands, mis-interprets something which is really very easy and means only what it says. And the reason are his expectations. What he expects to be there - he sees. No matter what.